Tag: Chris Carter

It was great to have “The X-Files” back with the six-episode miniseries earlier this year on Fox, and now it’s available on DVD, and you get a lot of nice bonus features (including commentaries on three episodes) for your $14. I prefer the small-screen method of reviving the show, rather than the big screen, as it allows different types of “X-Files” stories to be told for about the same time and cost commitment as a movie.

IDW’s “X-Files” Season 10 comics mark the first time Chris Carter has a story credit on an “X-Files” comic – he co-wrote Issues 1-5, “Believers,” with series helmer Joe Harris – but, ironically, IDW’s series now seems less canonical than Topps’ or Wildstorm’s. Although neither Carter nor Harris has issued a statement about the canonicity of the series, it seems pretty obvious that this is what happened: When IDW’s “X-Files” launched in 2013, it was intended to be canonical. Then, in 2016, Carter changed his mind when he relaunched “The X-Files” for TV, no doubt figuring that too much of the TV audience was unfamiliar with the comic to make the new episodes tie in with the comic.

In 2002, I watched “The X-Files” series finale with a couple of friends at a friend’s apartment. Obligatorily, we watched it with no lights on. I had been keeping up with the series, and was generally an apologist for it even though I didn’t pretend to understand the details of the alien colonization/government conspiracy mythology. My two friends had stopped watching the show years earlier, but felt they should watch the finale for old times’ sake and see how it wrapped up.

It used to be that when a TV show was canceled, that was the end; any dreams of future projects remained just that — dreams of the fans. But producers and creative types are starting to realize that just because a show ends, it doesn’t mean the fan base stops caring. “Buffy” is about to wrap up Season 9 in comic form (and Season 10 is on the way), a “Fringe” novel is on bookshelves, a “Veronica Mars” movie and books are planned for next year, and “24” will also return for another season in 2014.

I think the second “X-Files” movie, 2008’s “I Want to Believe,” is a nice thank-you letter to fans, who are given one last chance to follow Mulder and Scully into the darkness (plus: Hey, there’s Skinner!). It certainly has its detractors, though: The film scores a 5.9 on the IMDB ratings (compared to an 8.9 for the series as a whole and 6.8 for the first movie).

On my list of all-time favorite TV showrunners, Chris Carter ranks considerably higher than Glen Morgan and James Wong. Yet it’s hard to not side completely with Morgan and Wong in the conflict that is well known to “Millennium” fans.

The second season of “Millennium” (1997-98, Fox) is some sort of flawed masterpiece. Given heft by the performances of Lance Henrickson (as Frank Black), Terry O’Quinn (as Peter Watts) and Kristen Cloke (as Lara Means), “Millennium” clearly establishes itself here as a cut above all those other sort-of-“X-Files” shows from the 1990s.

Still hankering for an “X-Files” fix after rewatching all nine seasons of Chris Carter’s most famous show, I decided to finally check out “Millennium,” which in my head was like a second-rate, but still good, “X-Files.” (It is also technically part of “The X-Files” universe due to the Season 7 crossover episode.)

Although the common perception is that “The X-Files” went out with a whimper in Season 9 (2001-02, Fox), I actually found this to be a strong batch of episodes. On the downside, Annabeth Gish (as Monica Reyes) never quite materializes as a worthy partner to Robert Patrick, who by this time had made John Doggett almost as iconic as Mulder and Scully.